Costa Rica: The Coastal Challenge 2009
Day 3: Our first really big day, at 52.5 km and 2450 m cumulative ascent
Jacqueline Windh / 08.02.2009
This was the first of our three really big days on this race, with a 52.5 km route that includes 2450 m cumulative ascent (and, of course, descent - after a two days, of quad-burn, the downhills are actually much harder than the uphills). The time cut-off was at PC4, around 44 km, at 5pm - a very mentally challenging cut-off because it was so close to the end of the route: you could possibly make it almost the whole way and then get cut off. This was Expedition category’s longest distance of the race, but it was a bit of a rest day for Adventure categpry racers, who were doing a 15 km run on the beach and along the road.
The terrain was far from easy, with the first part of the day spent working our way up-river from Domincal (the town I’d spent the last week acclimatizing in, on the idyllic wave-washed and palm-fringed Pacific coast). A short run on gravel took us out of town, then we decended to the river bed (isn’t great getting your feet wet at the beginning of a long day?) The riverbed was mainly cobbled and boulders, where we could walk upstream for a few hundred m, then wade across to the opposite side to follow the next boulder bar for a few hundred m, then wade back again. This continued for 5 km. In most places, the water not more than knee deep, but occasionally it was waist-deep, and in one section we had to carefully traverse a steep rock-ledge alongside a pool, then finally jump in the pool and swim to the top of it.
PC1 was where we exited the river - I got there around 7:40am, and the sun should have been starting to show its full heat by now, but instead there was an overcast. Here was where we started climbing through the jungle, gaining 450 m, then dropping 200, then gaining another 550. I was feeling really good, and conditions were cool, so I continued pushing hard, up a steep forested gravel road, then down along a steep winding path to cross a river below a spectacular waterfall, then up another steep and winding jungle path (sorry if I overuse the word “steep� in these reports, but that’s just how things are) and into open farm country. I passed one tiny town (of about 3 houses) where I was able to buy a coke.
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